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Author Topic: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management  (Read 12559 times)

eronald

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #40 on: April 20, 2018, 08:28:29 pm »

DR. Ronald, PhD, still hasn't answered the questions I put to him in reply 25. Could that be because there aren't any?

Mark,

 An accidental query in my email window just brought up a colorsync list discussion we were having in ... 2011 when printing targets on Macs had turned into a nightmare.
 I think we've all already been around the block more than once, and owe each other more courtesy.
 If you want a PhD too, just go and get one. Like an expensive car it doesn't make the owner smarter but it does have bling value.  Getting it only eats 3 years of your life, and after what it cost me to get it, I do enjoy showing it off. If you were to remark that I would have had a more enriching life experience by educating kids for an NGO in the third world for a few years instead of my doctoral work, and would have become a better person and done some good, then I would agree. But I don't think that was your intent.

Edmund
« Last Edit: April 20, 2018, 08:32:56 pm by eronald »
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digitaldog

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #41 on: April 20, 2018, 08:32:31 pm »

DR. Ronald, PhD, still hasn't answered the questions I put to him in reply 25. Could that be because there aren't any?
Seems there aren't any....
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #42 on: April 20, 2018, 08:42:27 pm »

Mark,

 An accidental query in my email window just brought up a colorsync list discussion we were having in ... 2011 when printing targets on Macs had turned into a nightmare.
 I think we've all already been around the block more than once, and owe each other more courtesy.
 If you want a PhD too, just go and get one. Like an expensive car it doesn't make the owner smarter but it does have bling value.  Getting it only eats 3 years of your life, and after what it cost me to get it, I do enjoy showing it off. If you were to remark that I would have had a more enriching life experience by educating kids for an NGO in the third world for a few years instead of my doctoral work, and would have become a better person and done some good, then I would agree. But I don't think that was your intent.

Edmund

Yes, there was a problem in 2011 that Adobe resolved, and there was an Adobe problem about two years ago which I wrote an article about on this website and Adobe resolved it - pretty quickly. That's two episodes in 7 years both of which Adobe resolved.

No, my intent was to suggest that someone with your level of education should be able to substantiate/explain what they say on a Forum like this, especially when the claims made seem so outlandish to others who may not have PhDs, but aren't dopes either. Questions remain unanswered. It's not a matter of courtesy and I am immune to "bling". I'm only interested in real answers to sensible questions.
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Doug Gray

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #43 on: April 20, 2018, 09:33:25 pm »

As an aside, the smartest guy I ever hired was a PhD and it happened when I wasn't looking to hire anyone. I was chatting with a UCSD Prof. about some stuff I was working on and he mentioned he knew a former student that might be available, giving his name. I about fell off my chair. Turned out I had been browsing their library and  pulled the guy's thesis the week before because he had been investigating things I was also interested in developing commercially. It was open, sitting on my desk at the time.  Flew him out for an interview and hired the guy. Heavy into abstract algebra and coding theory. My experience with PhDs has been quite positive.
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eronald

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #44 on: April 20, 2018, 09:42:34 pm »

That's your experience as a photographer?

Yeah. Notice the little die on the shoulder of the model? It means "Dior". The lady with the die was my first fullpage magazine picture, back in prehistoric days. When I still thought that becoming a photographer might be a good idea. These days I think being a computer geek might actually be more rewarding :)

Edmund
« Last Edit: April 20, 2018, 09:47:34 pm by eronald »
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eronald

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #45 on: April 20, 2018, 09:55:26 pm »

I'm only interested in real answers to sensible questions.

Dear Mark,

Here is an excerpt of an email I exchanged with Dave Polashek, back in 2010 when I was the color engineer for the Gutenprint printing system, and I was tracing various issues which occurred in the color management on the Mac print path. Dave was extremely helpful, as I was trying to figure out where the issues lay. For context, Samplerasterprinter was some Apple sample code that created a fake printer, which I modded a bit to check the color flow without using ink. Later I found a way to hack the Mac's CUPS print system to do the same inspection task without needing to compile this piece of code.

The indented lines are mine.

As you can see, Dave considered the "Printer Manages Colors" to be "pretty well exercised" which in my book is what I would call "preferred". There were actually some minor issues here and many more on the other path, implicitly here because it was less exercised. I think the distribution of consumers/pros hasn't changed so much in 8 or so years, nor the API calls to apply color conversions, and would expect the printpaths to still enjoy the same popularity, complexity, and test priority, which is why I consider PMC to be the most reliable if not the best way to print..

I hope this was the level of detail you were expecting me to provide as evidence of my total ignorance of the topic at hand. Print system engineers   are extremely interested in ensuring the correct the behavior of print systems, and they use a bunch of diagnostic tools, including here software like trick profiles and fake printers they mod themselves, and of course spectros which get used to check the actual prints.

Although the fact that I have a PhD virtually guarantees in your eyes that I am a total failure not only as a photographer but also as an engineer, maybe we can now decide that I have an opinion on this issue, you have one, they are not aligned but neither is necessarily absurd. And also, some of my wierdness concerning a topic recently discussed on the colorsync list stems from the fact that much alcohol was consumed since then, many braincells died and so  I have forgotten most of the details that I knew about inkjet print preprocessing, while some other conversation participants never knew them. 

Best Regards,

Edmund
--------

> I slightly modded sampleraster printer (sRGB in lieu of
> Generic RGB in ppd file) . Preliminary testing with
> trick profiles indicates that
>
> - "Printer Manages Color" works well  from CS5 with any
> profile that can then be selected in the Snow Leopard
> printer dialog profile box being applied as convert, with
> the assigned original document profile correctly respected.

Right. That's a pretty well exercised code-path, with nothing especially tricky happening.
---------
« Last Edit: April 20, 2018, 10:40:22 pm by eronald »
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digitaldog

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #46 on: April 20, 2018, 10:36:32 pm »

Yeah. Notice the little die on the shoulder of the model? It means "Dior". The lady with the die was my first fullpage magazine picture, back in prehistoric days. When I still thought that becoming a photographer might be a good idea. These days I think being a computer geek might actually be more rewarding :)

Edmund

Yeah, editorials; been there, done that; low paying work. No wonder you gave it up for a doctorate.
Now advertising photography for a client like Microsoft, including the Photoshop work when few photographers were doing their own imaging, that paid well!

That full page editorial of yours was for what mag?
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eronald

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #47 on: April 20, 2018, 10:41:10 pm »


Yeah, editorials; been there, done that; low paying work. No wonder you gave it up for a doctorate.
Now advertising photography for a client like Microsoft, including the Photoshop work when few photographers were doing their own imaging, that paid well!

That full page editorial of yours was for what mag?

You never told me how you got appointed special prosecutor, Andrew.

Edmund
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #48 on: April 20, 2018, 10:52:32 pm »

Dear Mark,

Here is an excerpt of an email I exchanged with Dave Polashek, back in 2010 when I was the color engineer for the Gutenprint printing system, and I was tracing various issues which occurred in the color management on the Mac print path. Dave was extremely helpful, as I was trying to figure out where the issues lay. For context, Samplerasterprinter was some Apple sample code that created a fake printer, which I modded a bit to check the color flow without using ink. Later I found a way to hack the Mac's CUPS print system to do the same inspection task without needing to compile this piece of code.

The indented lines are mine.

As you can see, Dave considered the "Printer Manages Colors" to be "pretty well exercised" which in my book is what I would call "preferred". There were actually some minor issues here and many more on the other path, implicitly here because it was less exercised. I think the distribution of consumers/pros hasn't changed so much in 8 or so years, nor the API calls to apply color conversions, and would expect the printpaths to still enjoy the same popularity, complexity, and test priority, which is why I consider PMC to be the most reliable if not the best way to print..



Right. That's a pretty well exercised code-path, with nothing especially tricky happening.
---------

OK, in the above extract of your reply I've cut out the crap and just focused on your technical content, which is all I'm interested in. I think this evidence is dated and thin. Since those days, both print paths have undergone substantial technical improvement. Furthermore I wouldn't interpret Dave Polachek's comment in that context to have ranked Printer Color Management as technically superior in terms of printed output to a properly established Application Managed ICC profile based workflow.
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digitaldog

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #49 on: April 20, 2018, 10:53:16 pm »

You never told me how you got appointed special prosecutor, Andrew.

Edmund
More absurd comments without answering a simple question.

Let’s examine a quote Dave P. more recently from Ctein’s blog:

“I still think using "Photoshop Manages Colors" is preferable if you take the time to construct an optimal profile, have a challenging document to print, and can manage to do everything correctly. But the results from using "Printer Manages Colors," especially if you are using papers supported by your printer vendor, are extremely close to optimal, and most users should at least give that a try and look at the results before investing in the hardware needed, plus the time needed to build a good color profile.”

Understand the word preferable and why some here prefer this print path? A PhD should not have such difficulty understanding why pros and advanced users/photographers pick such a workflow.
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eronald

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #50 on: April 20, 2018, 11:23:19 pm »

OK, in the above extract of your reply I've cut out the crap and just focused on your technical content, which is all I'm interested in. I think this evidence is dated and thin. Since those days, both print paths have undergone substantial technical improvement. Furthermore I wouldn't interpret Dave Polachek's comment in that context to have ranked Printer Color Management as technically superior in terms of printed output to a properly established Application Managed ICC profile based workflow.

Mark

  Dave does not write as to his opinion, nor did I ask. I agree with you that a "properly established Application Managed ICC profile based workflow" is superior in many cases, and always when non-vendor media are loaded. But I don't think establishing it is as painless as going straight to PMC, which is why I would recommend amateurs ie. people not in proofing or printing trades stay with PMC and original media when they can.

Edmund
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #51 on: April 20, 2018, 11:34:04 pm »

Mark

  Dave does not write as to his opinion, nor did I ask. I agree with you that a "properly established Application Managed ICC profile based workflow" is superior in many cases, and always when non-vendor media are loaded. But I don't think establishing it is as painless as going straight to PMC, which is why I would recommend amateurs ie. people not in proofing or printing trades stay with PMC and original media when they can.

Edmund

These days I don't think setting up an application managed workflow with an ICC profile is difficult at all, especially printing through a user-friendly application such as Lightroom. Any normally intelligent person with a modicum of instruction freely available all over the place should be able to manage it correctly with only moderate effort. So I would have no problem recommending this path to anyone just getting into printing digital files. It's reasonable to recommend and instruct best practice from the get-go, given the tools we have today.
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eronald

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #52 on: April 20, 2018, 11:47:11 pm »

These days I don't think setting up an application managed workflow with an ICC profile is difficult at all, especially printing through a user-friendly application such as Lightroom. Any normally intelligent person with a modicum of instruction freely available all over the place should be able to manage it correctly with only moderate effort. So I would have no problem recommending this path to anyone just getting into printing digital files. It's reasonable to recommend and instruct best practice from the get-go, given the tools we have today.

One might add that anyone with a cheaper printer or older printer generation will get huge benefits from a profiled workflow, because cheaper printers tend to have a wider spread in factory calibration.

Edmund
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #53 on: April 21, 2018, 12:03:06 am »

One might add that anyone with a cheaper printer or older printer generation will get huge benefits from a profiled workflow, because cheaper printers tend to have a wider spread in factory calibration.

Edmund

Yes, in this case likely calling for a custom profile to get it just right.
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Doug Gray

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #54 on: April 21, 2018, 12:30:00 am »

One might add that anyone with a cheaper printer or older printer generation will get huge benefits from a profiled workflow, because cheaper printers tend to have a wider spread in factory calibration.

Edmund
While it is certainly reasonable that cheaper printers have a wider spread, it's quite apparent that much of the difference between PMC and AMC is intentional boosting of saturation and brightening the tone curve. It seems pretty obvious this is based on OEM's beliefs about what constitutes a "good" print for the average consumer who is most likely viewing the print at lower light levels and a higher surround than when viewing the image on a display.

This causes unavoidable compatibility issues for someone that, for whatever reason. prefers PMC when upgrading printers.

The purpose of my thread was to point out how to put PMC under color management so that one can achieve the same results on a different printer which would otherwise produce different prints using PMC. It does require understanding color management and having tools to create the necessary profile.  Clearly very few of those people would actually be using PMC. But putting it under color management can be done.
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eronald

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #55 on: April 21, 2018, 08:17:30 am »

While it is certainly reasonable that cheaper printers have a wider spread, it's quite apparent that much of the difference between PMC and AMC is intentional boosting of saturation and brightening the tone curve. It seems pretty obvious this is based on OEM's beliefs about what constitutes a "good" print for the average consumer who is most likely viewing the print at lower light levels and a higher surround than when viewing the image on a display.

This causes unavoidable compatibility issues for someone that, for whatever reason. prefers PMC when upgrading printers.

The purpose of my thread was to point out how to put PMC under color management so that one can achieve the same results on a different printer which would otherwise produce different prints using PMC. It does require understanding color management and having tools to create the necessary profile.  Clearly very few of those people would actually be using PMC. But putting it under color management can be done

Yes. And I think there is a simple way to explain this sort of thing. There are two inputs to a profiling engine, reference and measurement, which some people could call contravariant and covariant.  So to compensate for an effect you feed the profiler the altered (by printing) target measured file, to mimic an effect you instead feed the profile engine the corresponding altered reference file on its other input. Etc.

Edmund
« Last Edit: April 21, 2018, 08:35:04 am by eronald »
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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #56 on: April 21, 2018, 08:18:23 am »

Mark
  Dave does not write as to his opinion, nor did I ask.
Sure he does as shown below and no you didn’t ask but those who wanted to know did. And preferable (his words) do not take workflow considerations like soft proofing, RI selection and output specific edits based on them into account! That you didn’t ask while others did is telling. AMC provides better output and more control: period!

I would argue that an all-sRGB Printer Managed Color is preferable for photographers with  Epsons.
As hopefully a PhD can see now, Dave and others don't agree with that 'argument’
« Last Edit: April 21, 2018, 12:20:25 pm by andrewrodney »
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hokuahi

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #57 on: April 21, 2018, 09:52:01 am »

@andrewrodney

Sometimes you are just too funny...  ;D
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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #58 on: April 21, 2018, 09:56:30 am »

@andrewrodney

Sometimes you are just too funny...  ;D
Thank you   ;D   ;D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWINtUCshxY
« Last Edit: April 21, 2018, 10:01:51 am by andrewrodney »
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Mark D Segal

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Re: Putting "Printer Manages Color" under Color Management
« Reply #59 on: April 21, 2018, 10:08:05 am »

THAT is funny!
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